Mexico fires 7 officials after migrants' kidnappings

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Apr 20, 2011
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MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities fired seven regional directors of the country's immigration agency Thursday following allegations that its officers in northern Mexico had delivered Central American migrants to kidnapping gangs.

Salvador Beltran del Rio, who heads the National Migration Institute, or INM, described the firings as part of a wider effort to weed out corruption in the agency, which enforces Mexico's immigration laws. Mexican officials have vowed to fight armed groups that kidnap migrants to extort money or recruit them for drug trafficking.

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Mexico fires 7 officials after migrants' kidnappings

By some estimates, 400,000 migrants cross through Mexico each year on a risky northward trek that has grown more perilous as armed drug gangs increasingly target migrants, often in order to demand money from relatives in Central America or the United States.

Wouldn't it make sense to hire these gangs to remove the illegals from the US?
 
What's the Mexican word fer gettin' Shang-haied?...
:confused:
Rescued Migrants Allege Mexican Agents Pulled Them from Bus, Turned Them Over to Gangs
Thursday, May 12, 2011 - A group of Central American migrants recently rescued from kidnappers in northern Mexico has accused immigration agents of pulling them from a bus and handing them over to criminal gangs, public defenders said Monday.
The federal government said at least six agents from the National Institute for Migration had been arrested in the case. The Central Americans were among 120 migrants from various countries who were freed by Mexicans soldiers in several raids over the past month in the northern state of Tamaulipas. The migrants picked out the immigration officials from photographs shown to them by federal investigators, said Alejandro Roldan Velasquez, the director of the Federal Institute of Public Defenders, which is representing the migrants. “These people identified some agents as accomplices of the crime,” Roldan told The Associated Press. “They were shown photographs of immigration agents and they identified them.”

The public defenders institute has been advising all 120 migrants under a new anti-kidnapping law that took effect in February, requiring that all kidnapping victims be provided with free legal assistance. The migrants — 81 Mexicans, 33 Central Americans and six Chinese nationals presumably trying to reach the United States — were being held hostage at different houses in northern Tamaulipas, which borders Texas. In a statement last month, the federal government announced the arrest of six immigration agents in Tamaulipas for “federal crimes.” Alejandro Poire, the government spokesman for security issues, confirmed at a news conference Monday that those agents were arrested in the case of the kidnapped migrants, although he provided no details on their alleged role. “We must emphasize that there will be zero tolerance of anyone who calls themselves a civil servant and breaks the law or participates in these crimes,” Poire said.

The Mexican Attorney General’s office said in a statement that the six detained agents are suspected of kidnapping at least four migrants. Federal security forces last month also discovered 40 clandestine graves in Tamaulipas containing 183 bodies. Investigators suspect many of the victims were pulled from buses by the Zetas drug gang, which has been kidnapping both Mexicans and foreign migrants to demand extortion money or forcibly recruit them. Several Tamaulipas municipal police officers have been arrested for allegedly playing a role in the mass killings. Poire said investigators would determine if any immigration agents were also involved. Roldan would not say how many agents were identified by the migrants. He also declined to say how many migrants accused agents of involvement, saying he could not provide more details about an investigation that is still in progress.

Officials from the National Institute for Migration and the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment, saying they were preparing a joint statement. The public defenders institute said in its statement that the migrants who identified the immigration officers were all Central Americans. They are being held at secret locations under custody of the Attorney General’s Office because it was too risky to send them to migrant detention centers after they identified the immigration agents, the statement said. Roldan said at least four of the rescued migrants had been repatriated to Central America at their own request. Others are seeking humanitarian visas that would allow them to stay in Mexico.

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Zetas kidnap victims 'forced into death fights'...
:eek:
Kidnap victims forced into gladiator-style death fights by Mexican drug gangs
June 15, 2011 - MEXICO'S most feared drug cartel was already known for beheading, quartering and even cooking its enemies, in the brutal narcotics war gripping the country.
Now the Zetas gang is said to have created a new gladiator-like sport where innocent kidnap victims are forced to fight to the death, according to sources cited by UK newspaper The Times. Members of the cartel are said to have dubbed the sadistic spectacle "Who wants to be the next hitman?" Victims are armed with hammers and machetes and goaded into fighting for their survival and the chance to work as assassins. The alleged practice has been linked to mass graves where the remains of more than 400 people have been unearthed in recent months. "We've been given several suggestions that this kind of activity happens," a source at the US Drug Enforcement Agency told The Times.

A source with links to the drug trade said he had heard detailed accounts of the new blood sport. "The violence has reached such a level, even the gangsters are getting sick of it," he said. Mexico's northern border regions have suffered an explosion of violence as government forces battle the Zetas - a drug gang formed in the 1990s by former soldiers - and their former bosses, the powerful Gulf cartel, in a three-way war. The conflict has claimed nearly 35,000 victims in the past five years, according to official figures, but the true toll may never be known. Since 2006 at least 5300 Mexicans have disappeared. Witnesses have reported seeing large groups of people being snatched from intercity buses by gangs who appear to act with impunity.

Some kidnap victims have had one hand handcuffed to a car steering wheel, and a gun placed in the other, to be sent on murder missions. Others have been found hanged in the streets. Most of 200 bodies discovered in mass graves in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas were of victims apparently killed with sledgehammers or burnt alive. A report in the Houston Chronicle, which drew on an account from an anonymous drug runner, said: "The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. "And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death."

Source
 
The Mr. and I just spent five glorious days in Mexico City. It is an amazing wonderful place. All should see it.

But of course....the mexican government probably had the whole 'secret service' making sure nothing happens to tourists as that is the second biggest money maker for Mexico! Wonder what the locals say about that kind of protection when they are thrown to the drug cartels aka alligators - and my apologies to the alligators.
BTW, yes, Mexico is a 'wonderful' place. But NOT as wonderful as it once was!!!
 
The Mr. and I just spent five glorious days in Mexico City. It is an amazing wonderful place. All should see it.

But of course....the mexican government probably had the whole 'secret service' making sure nothing happens to tourists as that is the second biggest money maker for Mexico! Wonder what the locals say about that kind of protection when they are thrown to the drug cartels aka alligators - and my apologies to the alligators.
BTW, yes, Mexico is a 'wonderful' place. But NOT as wonderful as it once was!!!

...if only I were that special...sigh
 
The Mr. and I just spent five glorious days in Mexico City. It is an amazing wonderful place. All should see it.

But of course....the mexican government probably had the whole 'secret service' making sure nothing happens to tourists as that is the second biggest money maker for Mexico! Wonder what the locals say about that kind of protection when they are thrown to the drug cartels aka alligators - and my apologies to the alligators.
BTW, yes, Mexico is a 'wonderful' place. But NOT as wonderful as it once was!!!

...if only I were that special...sigh

sigh.....don't confuse the issue....it's not you - IT'S YOUR DOLLARS!!!
 
But of course....the mexican government probably had the whole 'secret service' making sure nothing happens to tourists as that is the second biggest money maker for Mexico! Wonder what the locals say about that kind of protection when they are thrown to the drug cartels aka alligators - and my apologies to the alligators.
BTW, yes, Mexico is a 'wonderful' place. But NOT as wonderful as it once was!!!

...if only I were that special...sigh

sigh.....don't confuse the issue....it's not you - IT'S YOUR DOLLARS!!!

I'm pretty sure that if the mexican government had the power to make the "whole secret service" do anything, it would be to annihilate root causes...
 
Queen of the Pacific can't be extradited...
:eusa_eh:
Mexico blocks extradition to US of accused drug trafficker 'Queen of Pacific'
August 10, 2011 - With her flashy outfits, posh tastes, and extensive criminal ties, Sandra Avila Beltran has become a media darling in Mexico and the US.
A federal court in Mexico has ruled that Sandra Avila Beltran, also known as the “Queen of the Pacific,” cannot be extradited to the United States on drug trafficking charges, a decision that comes as a major victory to one of the most well known figures of Mexico’s criminal underworld.

According to El Universal, the Mexico City-based First Circuit Court has ruled that Ms. Avila’s extradition, which had been authorized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is unlawful because it involves the same charges (drug trafficking) that she faces in Mexico. Under international law, it is customary for a person to be extradited to another country only if they face a different, and typically more serious, set of criminal charges.

Avila first gained attention from the media in September 2007 when she and her love interest, convicted Colombian drug trafficker Juan Diego Espinosa Ramírez, alias "El Tigre," were arrested by Mexican authorities for allegedly conspiring to smuggle nine tons of cocaine northward via a port in Colima in 2001.

Since then, Mexican and American media outlets have been fascinated by her, with Newsweek magazine calling her Mexico’s “Underworld Queenpin” and ABC news referring to her as Mexico’s “Glamorous Gangster.” As InSight Crime has noted, Avila raises interesting questions about gender roles in Mexico’s drug trade. Her flashy outfits and posh tastes are a rare sight in the world of drug trafficking, which is more often marked by images of scruffy, dangerous-looking men.

Even before earning the title “Queen of the Pacific” by becoming a key link between the Sinaloa Cartel and Colombia's Norte del Valle Cartel, Avila‘s life seemed destined to revolve around criminal activities. She was born into a family closely associated with drug trafficking, and her uncle was Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, alias “the Godfather,” who was one of Mexico’s first major drug traffickers.

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